Enchanting design, developed in tandem with reimagined tales, has always been Mary Zimmerman's trademark, from "Metamorphoses" through "Argonautika" to "The Arabian Nights." In "The White Snake," which opened Wednesday at the Roda Theatre, her seventh production at Berkeley Rep, design and inventive ensemble work carry more weight than the narrative.

The ancient Chinese fable is old enough to have been commemorated in a five-story Hangzhou pagoda built in 975, beneath which is trapped the snake spirit who fell in love with a mortal man. But if she's trapped, the serpent has kept evolving. In countless retellings - in novels, plays and operas - over the intervening centuries, the White Snake has been transformed from evil, man-eating demon to tragic romantic heroine, a history slyly invoked by Zimmerman at every "fork" (get it?) in her tale and brightly detailed in Nora Sørena Casey's program notes.

This is very much the world premiere production that opened at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in February, in a co-production with the Rep, with the same designers and cast, except for the versatile Mime Troupe veteran Keiko Shimosato Carreiro, who fits into the ensemble like a glove. Most of the actors play many parts in Mara Blumenfeld's ever-changing tapestry of rich Chinese fabrics layered atop one another and transforming into a serpent, broad-winged crane or towering Guanyin bodhisattva.

Amy Kim Waschke is a sweet, sincere White Snake, growing from intensely curious, slithering puppet to radiant human beauty and potent if anxious sorceress who can't quite repress all her serpentine instincts - such as the way her tongue flicks out to taste the air. Christopher Livingston is charmingly stunned and ever more deeply in love as her mortal husband, Xu Xian, and comically befuddled when Emily Sophia Knapp caresses him with the extra-long fingers of doubt.

Tanya Thai McBride delivers bright human and puppet comedy as Green Snake, the heroine's mischievously resourceful helpmate. Former American Conservatory Theater actor Jack Willis brings imposing true-believer conviction to Fa Hai, the Buddhist monk determined to save the world from "a nest of vipers" with the fervor of a right-wing fundamentalist, roaring, "This is Buddha's country!"

The great battle between monk and snake spirit is a buoyant Armageddon of human and puppet action and Andre Pluess' ingenious, Sino-American score, played by a deft strings, flutes and percussion trio. But the story remains somewhat thin. Despite Zimmerman's efforts to layer it with snippets of different versions and wry explications of Chinese theater techniques, it can't achieve the exciting complexity of the stories within stories of her "Arabian Nights."

But it comes close to that in visual terms, as wondrous puppetry delights the eye, the ink clouds of Shawn Sagady's projections dissolve into Chinese landscapes, and Daniel Ostling's set sprouts cabinets that may open to reveal a boudoir or something more startling. If the fable isn't fabulous, its presentation is.